Perfecting replication

It’s no secret that ensuring proper data protection at remote sites is one of a CTO’s most trying challenges. As often happens in this business, the perfect data protection system frequently depends on a company’s policies and applications portfolio.

In many cases, companies have to work a delicate balance between the cost of protecting data at a remote office and the damage resulting from losing information due to misbehaving hardware, software, or simple human error.

The cost of keeping remote data safe is high because in addition to purchasing hardware and software gear, companies often have to hire operators to ensure that there is local expertise at the remote sites to run data backup and restore procedures. In a previous life, I worked for a couple of companies where paying the salary to keep on-staff computer operators just to do backups at remote sites was, well, just one of those facts of life.

However, alternatives such as replication software are a better way to protect data at a remote office — especially compared to running backup jobs to tape. In fact, just about every major vendor of backup applications (including big names such as Computer Associates, Legato, Tivoli, and Veritas) offers complementary data replication systems.

How do those systems work? There are differences among vendors, but in general, you make room at the central office to keep a copy of each remote branch’s data. Specialized software installed at each location keeps the central and remote copy in sync, updating data at the central office according to custom rules.

Speaking of Veritas, the company just released Storage Replicator 3.0, a new version of its data replication software for Windows that, I am told, improves on ease of use and offers a revamped GUI, more in line with the look and feel of Backup Exec.

We all know that on a WAN, you never have enough bandwidth. Appropriately, Storage Replicator makes it possible to make more efficient use of telecom lines, for example, by confining replication activities to a predefined amount of bandwidth and transferring only changed blocks to the central site.

At a licensing price of $1,495 per server, Veritas Storage Replicator will probably cost less than installing traditional backup gears remotely, although customers will likely have to fortify their central site with more storage hardware and licenses for backup software.

During my conversation with Veritas, I was reminded that in 2003 the market for server-based replication solutions increased almost 50 percent. That’s probably one of the reasons why Asigra, a software company based in Toronto, decided to expand its flagship backup and replications software, Televaulting, making it available to all customers. Televaulting was previously sold only to service providers.

In the words of Eran Farajun, executive vice president at Asigra, some market dynamics created a “perfect storm” condition for Televaulting. He adds that by using Televaulting, customers can save on administration costs because the product offers consolidated replica and backup services for multiple platforms including Linux, Solaris, and Windows. 

Customers should also save on acquisition costs, according to Farajun, because Televaulting’s licensing model (with a starting price of $11,250) varies according to the compressed capacity stored at the central location and doesn’t charge additional fees for each protected server.

From a more technical point of view, I like Televaulting’s online maintenance of several generations of protected files. I also appreciate the way users can independently restore their own files without central office supervision, although that’s adjustable to match company policies.

Also interesting is that despite an agentless architecture, Televaulting smartly protects the most common databases and e-mail systems, delivering features such as delta processing, compression, encryption, and elimination of redundant transfers of common attached files.

It’s possible that those companies I used to work for (long, long ago) have now switched to a more flexible data protection scheme than replicating the datacenter model at each branch. If they haven’t, well, shame on them. With modern replications tools such as the ones offered by Asigra and Veritas, plus dirt-cheap storage space and telecom lines, there is really no excuse for continuing to bang on those tapes today.